On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
Steve from Mendocino
A final collection of pictures from Puerto Rico before my Virgin Islands post.
These first 6 photos are of old San Juan.
Lunch on the terrace of the Dorado Beach Hotel. This hotel is one of the resorts in the chain founded by Lawrence Rockefeller in the 1950’s. All Rockefeller resorts were upscale and well executed in beautiful settings. Dorado Beach included a Robert Trent Jones golf course among the four courses shared by Dorrado Beach Hotel and its sister, Cerromar. I don’t golf, but the course, which runs along the coast, provides a lovely backdrop for lounging about. My sport is/was tennis, and I got plenty of that while in Puerto Rico. Playing with low pressure balls in a heavy rain surrounded by jungle is a magical and exotic variation on the game. The beach bar of the hotel was my after work headquarters many days when I got home.
This was my condominium during the period I lived in Puerto Rico. It’s smaller on the inside than it appears. All that glass fronts a two-story living/dining room. One bathroom and one small bedroom plus a couple terraces competed the floor plan. This terrace looks out at one of the tees of the Trent Jones course. There were high fences and regular patrols by security guards, so, once I got home, I could forget about physical danger. I was able to buy Jordan cabernet and Grgich chardonnay at wholesale as well as good European cheeses. I brought frozen meat in a huge cooler on my monthly trips home from Los Angeles. Food options were much more limited than what I was used to, but we ate very well.
p.a.
Nice pics. Sadly my main memory of a brief trip through San Juan is the prevalence of concertina wire atop walls & fences: talking mid-1990s. Hope things better now.
J R in WV
Nice pictures. My wife went to a union convention in Puerto Rico, also commented about bars on windows and concertina barbed wire, evidently much crime there at that time. Late ’90s or early ’00s — also very warm/hot. Hotel staff all wore jackets indoors so as to be able to stand normal temps outdoors. I love the tropics, loved 1970s Key West, but hot weather saps me fast now.
Thanks for sharing the pics. Looking forward to Virgin Islands photos, visited there with Wife and my Dad in 1990 for a week of sailboat cruise. Was wonderful, but poverty was sad.
WaterGirl
I have really enjoyed the Puerto Rico pictures!
J_A
I spent a week in Puerto Rico about four years ago, driving across the island like crazy. The drive through the mountains and valleys in the middle of the island (not the highway, the real road ?) is one of my best driving memories and compares very well with driving over the Dolomites, or the Route Napoleon in southern France.
I wouldn’t try to eat meat in the Caribbean (I lived in the Dominican Republic in the late nineties) but while in Puerto Rico I ate fresh fish eatery single meal. Mostly brilliant, fresh, tasty, whole snappers. I was able to find great fish in every small corner of the island.
Goat is also quite available in the Caribbean, and, probably a surprise to many, it is a delicious meat. Alas, very difficult to find here in the USA.
JanieM
Thanks, Steve, very interesting set. Like the last ones, these feel otherworldly to me, probably from a mix of causes: 1) the way the shots are presented (including the absence of people in most of them); 2) the actual place; 3) my own tastes in travel.
My travels, and my unfulfilled travel longings, have always been for more northern lands; tropical places just don’t do it for me (at least in my imagination). My sister and another friend have sailed in the Caribbean and loved it, and @J_A‘s description of the mountains and the meals is also chipping away at my resistance. It would be fun to win the lottery and do a grand tour of the world based on places I’ve seen in OTR. Short of that, thanks to everyone who posts pictures here — the armchair version is plenty fascinating!
Desertflower
Looking forward to your USVI photos. Lived there as a kid in the late ’60’s early ”70s….idyllic life for me. Loved it all. Looking forward to seeing if/how much things have changed.
HinTN
It’s that an orange tree in the corner of the pinkish wall with the church in thre background? Love the vicarious visit. Thanks!
JanieM
Testing
Steve from Mendocino
@HinTN: Unlikely to be an orange tree, but I really have no idea. There are local oranges in Puerto Rico. It’s a short season, and they look hideous, but they make some of the best orange juice I’ve ever had. Puerto Rico happens to be the largest producer of passion fruit, and, when it wasn’t orange season, I would have passion fruit juice every morning for breakfast. Cheap and available in large plastic jugs at the super market.